I find it faintly disturbing that they even thing a Bush has a chance again, because holly fuck balls kids the last one was DR insano. I am really not sure we will know just how much damage his bullshit did to the world in general for years to come

Better yet, instead of a bunch of primary debates, we can have death ring matches. Random selection from both sides, once a week. Or just total random draw from the whole pool, including Independents. Rotate coverage between FOX, ABC, NBC, and CBS, and stick the whole thing on YouTube when it is over. Announce the names drawn on Monday. Toss em into the fire Thursday, 6 pm Pacific.

Yeah... he's got low approval ratings that are getting lower all the time, plus that John Doe probe looks to be getting ready to cause problems for him again, and rightly so. (Of course, the Koch brothers have worked wonders with their billions as far as keeping that problem out of the limelight, but that won't help if legal action actually happens, fingers crossed.) Oh, and Walker also has the distinction of having gotten fired from his own job creation agency.

Personally, I really don't feel I align too strongly with either the Democratic or Republican party. I vote based on the person, not on the party they run for. One of the things that I like about Trump is that seems to be running as a Republican more out of convenience than anything else given his hinting that he could run as an Independent or something if the GOP failed to back him up. I certainly don't see this as a hollow threat.

For this election, the issues that I'm most concerned with are the economy, climate change and foreign policy. I know that none of the candidates will fill these three arenas perfectly, so I'm just looking for the best match along with a few other personal qualities that I feel are important. Confidence, communication skills, agressiveness and proven competence are way up there on my list.

I think one of the reasons why Trump is getting so much attention is that many of us are sick and tired of getting stuck with the same lame ass puppet candidates year after year. This year we are facing yet another Bush and the uglier of the two Clintons ( bear in mind, Bill and Hillary claimed that they were a *team* back when Bill was in office and Hillary claimed to be co-president. ). We also few ther candidates who are kind of passive and quite. Personally, I'd like to see Trump get in with the hope that he would get the country into better financial shape over the next four years. Yeah, he's with the Rebulicans, but I think finance is more important at this time.

Yeah, so far Trump is just drawing attention to himself and drowing the other candidates out, so we're not really hearing anything of substance from him yet. I see this as tactical play and it makes sense as far as being competitive goes. I'm hoping this will change as the number of serious candidates is whittled down to a few.

I think there's a similarity between Sanders and Trump which explains why both tend to dominate the debate on their side of the aisle. For all their sins it's pretty clear that when they decide to say something or take up a position they aren't doing so because a focus group indicated that it would be a good position to take. In an era where most political candidates seem to develop policies less on what they actually believe and more on what their advisers tell them will resonate well with certain voting demographics that's refreshing. Sanders clearly believes what he says and it doesn't matter to him if focus groups indicate that identifying as a socialist hurts his chances. Trump... well, maybe he believes what he says, maybe he's just trolling on a grand scale but regardless it's clear that campaign advisers didn't tell him what to say or how to say it. There's something similar going on in the UK with the Labour leadership election; while most of the candidates are talking about politics as a game and discussing how to "win", Jeremy Corbyn is talking about politics as a battle of ideas and presented a left-wing view of it. Agree or disagree with him (and I disagree with much of what he says) you can't deny that he believes what he says and is saying it because he believes it rather than saying it because he thinks it will win him an election.

One word of warning on the Sanders campaign. I'm getting distinct Ron Paul vibes from it. Not in the sense that they have similar policies (although as you'd expect there are a lot of similarities between a libertarian and a more left-wing liberal in some areas) but in the way people argue their campaigns are successful. Much like Sanders Paul drew large numbers to rallies, he raised a considerable amount of money from lots of little donors rather than a few big ones, he had a large number of supporters online and he flew in the face of the established party hierarchy. But for all that support Paul's campaign never got the people on the ground it needed and he never came particularly close to getting the nomination.

There are differing circumstances one has to consider. While the Democrats are starting to divide as a party they're nowhere near as splintered as the Republicans. A libertarian has very little in common with a moral majority/culture wars style Republican who in turn has relatively little in common with an out-and-out war hawk or an advocate for big business. Right now the difference between democrats tend to be ones of scale; they agree on basically everything but differ in how to solve it. The Republicans have/had fundamental disagreements about what the problems are to begin with. When Paul talked about foreign policy he was disagreeing on a fundamental level with war hawks. When Sanders talks about raising the minimum wage to improve the lives of those less well off there's no fundamental disagreement with other Democrats... thus he gets to speak to more of his audience. In essence he only has to convince people that his solution is the right one and that he is the man to implement it. Paul had to convince people that the problems he saw were actually the problems.

There's a difference in the field as well. In his first run he was against high profile and well established rival candidates such as McCain, Romney, Huckabee and Giuliani. In 2012 he faced off with the likes of Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Huntsman, Santorum and Romney again. In contrast Sanders is only really facing Clinton at this point. If a Republican disliked the establishment candidate in those primaries (generally seen as Romney for both of them) there were lots of options they could choose from. If they dislike Hillary this time then Sanders is the only real alternative.

Even with those advantages compared to the Paul campaign in mind however I still think people need to be cautious. If you went simply by how many turned out to rallies and online support you'd have thought that Paul would sweep into the Republican nomination. He didn't. The same may happen to Sanders.

Above I mentioned how the Democrats are generally more unified than the Republicans but we've had the first real signs of cracks starting to form recently. For the second time Sanders was targeted by #BlackLivesMatter campaigners who got onto the stage at a recent rally, demanded (and received) the microphone, called the crowd white supremacists, demanded (and received) a four and half miniute silence for Michael Brown and then got the rally shut down entirely.

I think this could be a reoccurring theme.

Sanders is in a lot of ways a soft target. Because he agrees that racism is an issue he's got some sympathy for the protestors, because his campaign isn't as stage managed as Clinton's it's much easier for people to get at him and because images of black women being beaten or arrested at his rallies would play horribly among his likely voters there's only so much security can do (hell, the image of an old, rich, white Jewish man telling black women to be quiet is bad enough on its own).

But beyond just being a soft target Sanders is also a target. Sanders has a long history of promoting racial equality but he's always treated racial issues as the symptom, not the cause to what he sees as the real issue; economic equality. He's in many ways an old school left winger who sees class and wealth as being of far more import than race/gender/religion/etc. The previous incident where #BlackLivesMatter protesters took over an event is a good example of that; Sanders was asked questions about racial inequality and responded by talking about economic inequality. But modern social justice advocates have tended to not only reject that view but actually declare it racist in and of itself. In the same way that they tend to see #AllLivesMatter as a racist response to #BlackLivesMatter they see someone talking about economic equality as a racist response to dealing with black equality, erasing black people from the story and not noting their lack of privilege.

It's hard to deal with that argument.

I've already seen responses on social media to this latest occurrence which not only support the activists but say that what happened next actually proved them right. That Bernie leaving the stage shows that he has no interest in listening to black voices. That the fact that the crowd booed and dispersed once Bernie left showed that they were white supremacists. That the fact they'd rather listen to an old white man rather than black women shows that they are racist. Such people take the position that the protestors won a victory and revealed the racist nature of Sanders and his supporters.

Hillary's already indicated that she's going to go after Sanders on the subject of race and his view that the driving force is economic inequality. Every incident like this just makes that more likely and a stronger message.

Above I mentioned how the Democrats are generally more unified than the Republicans but we've had the first real signs of cracks starting to form recently. For the second time Sanders was targeted by #BlackLivesMatter campaigners who got onto the stage at a recent rally, demanded (and received) the microphone, called the crowd white supremacists, demanded (and received) a four and half miniute silence for Michael Brown and then got the rally shut down entirely.

That's not the only one they shut down. The link you provided had a linked article telling about how the activists shut down a rally for Martin O'Malley, who they said had a better criminal justice package prepared for solving the problem than Sanders did. I would expect to see this sort of behavior at any future Democratic rallies, with perhaps the exception of Hillary, simply because her rallies will be more planned out and secure and protestors trying to climb onto the stage to hog the mike will be likely to be met with stronger responses than what they got at the Sanders and O'Malley ones.

And of course they got their demanded silence. Speaking out against silence for what was an unfortunate event has the hugely negative side-effect of making the speaker look like a total asshole, which is what the protestors were counting on. 'Nobody'll say anything, and if they do, then we call them racists.'

Sanders is in a lot of ways a soft target. Because he agrees that racism is an issue he's got some sympathy for the protestors, because his campaign isn't as stage managed as Clinton's it's much easier for people to get at him and because images of black women being beaten or arrested at his rallies would play horribly among his likely voters there's only so much security can do (hell, the image of an old, rich, white Jewish man telling black women to be quiet is bad enough on its own).

But beyond just being a soft target Sanders is also a target. Sanders has a long history of promoting racial equality but he's always treated racial issues as the symptom, not the cause to what he sees as the real issue; economic equality. He's in many ways an old school left winger who sees class and wealth as being of far more import than race/gender/religion/etc. The previous incident where #BlackLivesMatter protesters took over an event is a good example of that; Sanders was asked questions about racial inequality and responded by talking about economic inequality. But modern social justice advocates have tended to not only reject that view but actually declare it racist in and of itself. In the same way that they tend to see #AllLivesMatter as a racist response to #BlackLivesMatter they see someone talking about economic equality as a racist response to dealing with black equality, erasing black people from the story and not noting their lack of privilege.

It's hard to deal with that argument.

Only if you're looking at the here and now and not at the long-term picture. The idea that solving the problem of racial inequality can be addressed on purely a racial level sounds appealing, but Sanders is absolutely right, racial issues are a symptom and not the underlying problem. The best way to solve the problem is to attack poverty, economic inequality, and other such seemingly indirect factors. The way to get cops to stop shooting unarmed black kids is not to tell them not to do it. The way to get it to happen is to break the perception of blacks as more criminal than other ethnicities. And the way to do that is to reduce the number of black people being sent to jail, and a prime way to do that is to help lift them out of poverty: a lot of people will turn to crime as a way to escape 'the hood,' or poverty, because they see no other option. The key is to give them options, give them choices, ones that don't involve crime.

A recent Young Turks newsstory talked about the shooting death of another unarmed teenager by a cop. Except this one was white, and it literally had all the hallmarks of the seemingly now-endless parade of 'cops killing unarmed black men' stories we see. The teen was going through a drivethru, the cop got suspicious and felt that there was something 'off' about him, he felt threatened, and responded with lethal force, even though the cop's story is currently somewhat suspect because of the evidence available so far.

The problem that spawned #BlackLivesMatter is bigger than that. The problem is the increasing militarization of our police force, which is a response to the rises in crime and gang memberships and other criminal factors. Cops are now shooting first and asking questions later because they are told to take no chances with their lives, and they are being given military hardware but not the training soldiers and other armed forces members receive in how to use it. De-escalation. It used to be a thing, but you hardly see the cops 'talk down' someone anymore. Because now it's just easier to shoot them, despite the availability of public video recording devices these days, since unless you are highly, supremely evidently racist, cops can depend on the Blue Brotherhood to stand up for them.

I've already seen responses on social media to this latest occurrence which not only support the activists but say that what happened next actually proved them right. That Bernie leaving the stage shows that he has no interest in listening to black voices. That the fact that the crowd booed and dispersed once Bernie left showed that they were white supremacists. That the fact they'd rather listen to an old white man rather than black women shows that they are racist. Such people take the position that the protestors won a victory and revealed the racist nature of Sanders and his supporters.

Hillary's already indicated that she's going to go after Sanders on the subject of race and his view that the driving force is economic inequality. Every incident like this just makes that more likely and a stronger message.

I don't blame Bernie for leaving. After that display, the entire rally would have been about him responding to the protestors, rather than him presenting his ideas to the crowd, to explain what his vision is for fixing our problems. That's part of what a republic is all about - you listen to the ideas of the person you are electing, and then decide if you agree with them enough to vote with them to put them in office. If you want your ideas in office, then you should run, or we shouldn't be a republic but a straight-up democracy.

And the idea that he has no interest in listening to them is just ridiculous. Sanders is about as left-wing as you can get in this race. If he has no interest in listening to and helping black people, then there is no hope for them at all. The right isn't going to help them, that everyone knows. But if the left isn't really willing to stick themselves out there for them, then who is?

The protestors have won nothing. Each incident like this afterwards only shows that this movement is going the same way the Tea Party movement went, too. If you remember, the Tea Party was a spontaneous grassroots movement that formed in response to the 2008 financial meltdown. But then that got co-opted by the far right, and now the face of the Tea Party are guys like Ted Cruz, who don't stand for the ideas that formed the initial Tea Party at all.

#BlackLivesMatter has much the potential to go the same way. It started as a way to address the problems of economy, crime, and police militarization, but now I'm seeing it become a cudgel for black people to shut up anyone who isn't. At the O'Malley event, the protestors chanted at the host:

"Say that black lives matter; say that I am not a criminal; say my name."

And the head speaker said that "We are in a state of emergency. If you do not feel that emergency, then you are not human."

Those are not ways to get people on your side - forcing people to say what you want them to say at threat of gunpoint, or calling people inhuman simply because their experience is not your own. Those are ways to turn people against you.

I may be wrong, and I probably am, but from where I'm standing, people who wave the #BlackLivesMatter flag don't care about fixing the problem, or justice anymore. They want blood. They want heads on pikes. They want all white people everywhere to admit to white privilege and feel horrible about something they have no control over.

Is racism still a problem? Only an idiot would say no. But the racism we're dealing with today is largely a matter of individual perception and education. To paraphrase a quote I heard on Law & Order a long time ago: we're past the drinking fountain stage. We're past the separate lunch counter stage. We're at the hearts and minds stage, and there is no quick or easy solution to that. The solution is, in essence, to get everyone people to see in terms of "people, who are X" rather than "X people."

But that takes time, effort, and nobody wants to be bothered with that in today's fast & instant world.

If Trump goes independent, the Republicans are going to lose. There's no two ways about that. And more than that, he has actually threatened to do so more than once. If I were the Democrats right now, I would be praying as hard as I could for that to happen, because that will basically sew up the election for them.

In other news, there was another debate recently - one in Canada, where leaders actually talked about the issues and made points about how the government is going to operate than spew sound bites, like some of these.

Christie: "We gotta stop worrying about being loved and start worrying about being respected."

Cruz: "If you join ISIS, if you wage jihad on America, then you are signing your death warrant."

My all-time favorite from that comes from Huckabee, when asked about the T in LGBT, in the military:

"The military is not a social experiment. The purpose of the military is kill people and break things."

People talk about the debate, but the more I think about it, it wasn't a debate, it was a session to spew headliners.

I had to post this somewhere--may as well here...Ted Cruz continues to scare me. I'm starting to think some of the Republican candidates are trying to invent/find more ways to gain attention and screentime since Trump has been fairly efficient at taking it away from them. >_>

If Trump goes independent, the Republicans are going to lose. There's no two ways about that. And more than that, he has actually threatened to do so more than once. If I were the Democrats right now, I would be praying as hard as I could for that to happen, because that will basically sew up the election for them.

I had to post this somewhere--may as well here...Ted Cruz continues to scare me. I'm starting to think some of the Republican candidates are trying to invent/find more ways to gain attention and screentime since Trump has been fairly efficient at taking it away from them. >_>

I really don't think powder residue is an approved bacon seasoning. In fact, abusing bacon in such a fashion should be considered grounds for being declared incompetent to run a tree house club, much less an actual country.

It's funny how many news commentators said that Trump should have appologized for his comments about the Mexicans and Megyn Kelly. This is just the thing that some of us absolutely hate about politicians. They say a lot of shit and then back peddle when it's convenient. Either they do it in their campaign, or they do when they reach the white house.

To be honest, I'm a little more worried now about Trump's narsicism and deflection tactics than I was before, but I have to give him credit for saying what he believes and sticking to it. He may be a bit of a schmuck, but at least he has a spine.

One guy over here said that Trump was the best thing that could happen for the Democrats. Half the Republicans hate him and after his comments about females, they probably too, so any Democrat going up against Trump would easily win.

Speaking of Trump, can anybody explain what would happen if he would run for presidency as an independant candidate?

What happens when he does get elected as neutral or independent candidate? In terms of ministers and political power etc. Just curious.

Also, is it possible in the US, to have two parties form a coalition in order to get a majority of government? Like in the UK?

The level of media blackout on Bernie Sanders and his recent rallies is seriously creeping me out. I didn't used to put much stock in claims of coordinated media bias... but damn. The guy's drawing crowds no other candidate could dream of and they still want to act like he's not a serious candidate.

EDIT: I guess I should clarify. The only stories I do see are of a negative slant, e.g., focused on a couple of hecklers that disrupted one of his events instead of the tens of thousands of people turning out.

The US only has two major parties. People like Sanders are usually the only representative of their party in Congress, so they caucus with one party or another.

Polls show that Trump would lose against either Clinton or Sanders, and I don't see that changing. A Sanders vs Trump ticket would be hilarious, but the only way that happens is if he runs as an independent. He presumably has enough money to do so.

The president has a fair amount of power on their own but without the support of Congress there is little they can do in terms of policy. Trump's boorish attitude is more likely to leave him isolated, and costing the nation immensely on the diplomatic stage. He's not a politician and whatever you may think of it that's not actually a compliment.

Sanders winning the election, however, would be hilarious. Fox News would have to come to terms with the realization that the country voted for an avowed socialist.

Honestly though, Sanders doesn't need to win. He just needs to come close. It might be best for him to come very close to winning, either the primary or the main race. Winning means he has to work in a very hostile environment. Coming close to winning means modern politicians have to take the true left seriously again, for the first time in more than a century.

One guy over here said that Trump was the best thing that could happen for the Democrats. Half the Republicans hate him and after his comments about females, they probably too, so any Democrat going up against Trump would easily win.

Speaking of Trump, can anybody explain what would happen if he would run for presidency as an independant candidate?

What happens when he does get elected as neutral or independent candidate? In terms of ministers and political power etc. Just curious.

Also, is it possible in the US, to have two parties form a coalition in order to get a majority of government? Like in the UK?

Third parties in the U.S. are notoriously small. Since 1948, there have only been 6 members of Congress elected as Independents (or other third parties). As such, while they may vote with one side or the other, the numbers simply aren't there to swing a minority party to a majority. There are Congressmen that do not always vote along party lines, however (somewhat rare these days, but it happens). Typically those are of the more moderate persuasion, and can shift an individual vote one way or another.

I think the last third-party candidate that made a significant impact in the Presidential voting was Teddy Roosevelt's 'Bull Moose Party' - which was directly responsible for Woodrow Wilson serving as President.

In the hypothetical case, though - each President picks their own Cabinet (Secretary of Labor, etc.), and the Senate has hearings to confirm the appointments (a simple majority vote in most cases). This would go the same way with an Independent as it would with any other President.

Positions such as Senate Majority Leader etc. are filled based on which party has control of that particular branch, and are chosen by party caucus. For example, since the Republicans have majority control of the Senate, the Republicans chose Mitch McConnell to be the Majority Leader. The President had no voice in the matter. The House of Representatives as a whole elects the Speaker of the House. (As a result, the Speaker of the House usually comes from the party with majority control.)

So with all that, what chance do the republicans have to bring the next president?

As an outsider, I'd hope for the Democrats to win. Not sure if Clinton is the right person but for me, she'd be better choice than any of the Republicans I have seen and heard so far. They are mostly talking about war and how terrible the current government is doing.

So with all that, what chance do the republicans have to bring the next president?

My gut tells me about 1 in 3. Based on what I've seen, about 45% of the U.S. is on the left and about the same is on the right. So most presidential elections come down to how much of the middle 10% can each party persuade to join their side. The middle 10% tend to be hybrids that do not fully agree with the positions of either party--e.g., they may be socially liberal, but fiscally conservative, or they may be pro-life but for more welfare protection.

The news tends to cover the extremes of the left and right because that is the best way to get larger audiences. But simply watching the news alone will not get you a true sense of who is going to win the presidency.

Right now, I think if it was Kasich vs. Clinton, it would be really close. 50/50 maybe. But if it was say, Cruz vs. Clinton, it'd be a blowout. Cruz won't get enough of the 10% in the middle. Trump v. Sanders? I've no clue. I'd just buy more popcorn.